For one night only, two people will have the chance to experience a Halloween night 20m under Paris in the catacombs. Photograph: Airbnb/REX Shutterstock

“Before bedtime, a storyteller will have you spellbound with fascinating tales from the catacombs, guaranteed to produce nightmares. Finally, enjoy dawn with the dead, as you become the only living person ever to wake up in the Paris catacombs,” reads the listing.

Town hall sources said on Monday the California-based Airbnb paid up to 350,000 euros to privatise the tunnels.

The transfer of human remains from Parisian cemeteries to the tunnels began towards the end of the 18th century, when authorities realised that the decomposition of bodies in the city’s cemeteries was not particularly good for public health.

“It was said that the wine was turning bad and the milk was curdling,” Sylvie Robin, the site’s curator, told AFP in an interview last year.

Paris is sitting on an underground space 10 times the size of New York’s Central Park. Some 300km of tunnels and disused quarries are closed to the public, but could these spaces play a role in the city’s development?